That is half two of a multi-part weblog collection on AI. Half one, Why 2024 is the Yr of AI for Networking, mentioned Cisco’s AI networking imaginative and prescient and technique. This weblog will deal with evolving information heart community infrastructure for supporting AI/ML workloads, whereas the following weblog will talk about the Cisco compute technique and improvements for mainstreaming AI.

As mentioned partly one of many weblog collection, Synthetic intelligence (AI) and machine studying (ML) have just lately skilled a steep funding trajectory just lately, catapulted by generative AI. This has opened up new alternatives to ship actionable insights and real-world problem-solving capabilities.

Generative AI requires a big quantity of processing energy and better networking efficiency to ship outcomes quickly. Hyperscalers have led the AI revolution with mass-scale infrastructure utilizing 1000’s of graphics processing models (GPUs) to course of petabytes of knowledge for AI workloads, resembling coaching fashions. Many organizations, together with enterprise, public sector, service suppliers, and Tier 2 web-scalers, are exploring or beginning to use generative AI with coaching and inference fashions.

To course of AI/ML workloads or jobs that contain massive information units,  it’s essential to distribute them throughout a number of GPUs in an AI/ML cluster. This helps steadiness the load via parallel processing and ship high-quality outcomes shortly. To realize this, it’s important to have a high-performance community that helps non-blocking, low-latency, lossless cloth. With out such a community, latency or packet drops could cause studying jobs to take for much longer to finish, or might not full in any respect. Equally, when operating AI inferencing in edge information facilities, it is important to have a sturdy community to ship real-time insights to numerous end-users.

Why Ethernet?

The muse for many networks at this time is Ethernet, which has developed from use in 10Mbps LANs to WANs with 400GbE ports. Ethernet’s adaptability has allowed it to scale and evolve to satisfy new calls for, together with these of AI. It has efficiently overcome challenges resembling scaling previous DS1, DS3, and SONET speeds, whereas sustaining the standard of service for voice and video site visitors. This adaptability and resilience have allowed Ethernet to outlast alternate options resembling Token Ring, ATM, and body relay.

To assist enhance throughput and decrease compute and storage site visitors latency, the distant direct reminiscence entry (RDMA) over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) community protocol is used to help distant entry to reminiscence on a distant host with out CPU involvement.  Ethernet materials with RoCEv2 protocol help are optimized for AI/ML clusters with broadly adopted standards-based know-how, simpler migration for Ethernet-based information facilities, confirmed scalability at decrease cost-per-bit, and designed with superior congestion administration to assist intelligently management latency and loss.

In response to the Dell’oro Group, AI networks will act as a catalyst to speed up the transition to greater speeds. Market demand from “Tier 2/3 and huge enterprises are forecast to be vital, approaching $10 B over the following 5 years,” and they’re anticipated to choose Ethernet.

Why Cisco AI infrastructure?

We have now made vital investments in our information heart networking portfolio for AI infrastructure throughout platforms, software program, silicon, and optics. This embrace Cisco Nexus 9000 Collection switches, Cisco 8000 Collection Routers, Cisco Silicon One, community working techniques (NOSs), administration, and Cisco Optics (see Determine 1).

Determine 1. Cisco AI/ML information heart infrastructure options

This portfolio is designed for information heart Ethernet networks transporting AI/ML workloads, resembling operating inference fashions on Cisco unified computing system (UCS) servers. Clients want decisions, which is why we’re offering flexibility with completely different choices.

Cisco Nexus 9000 Collection switches are built-in options that ship high-throughput and supply congestion administration to assist scale back latency and site visitors drops throughout AI/ML clusters. Cisco Nexus Dashboard helps view and analyze telemetry, and will help shortly configure AI/ML networks with automation, together with congestion parameters, ports, and including leaf/backbone switches. This resolution gives AI/ML prepared networks for patrons to satisfy the important thing necessities, with a blueprint for community infrastructure and operations.

Cisco 8000 Collection Routers help disaggregation for information heart use circumstances requiring high-capacity open platforms utilizing Ethernet—resembling AI/ML clusters within the hyperscaler phase. For these use circumstances, the NOS on the Cisco 8000 Collection Routers might be third-party or Software program for Open Networking within the Cloud (SONiC), which is community-supported and designed for patrons needing an open-source resolution. Cisco 8000 Collection Routers additionally help IOS XR software program for different information heart routing use circumstances, together with super-spine, information heart interconnect, and WAN.

Our options portfolio leverages Cisco Silicon One, which is Cisco chip innovation based mostly on a unified structure that delivers high-performance with useful resource effectivity. Cisco Silicon One is optimized for latency management with AI/ML clusters utilizing Ethernet, telemetry-assisted Ethernet, or absolutely scheduled cloth. Cisco Optics allow excessive throughput on Cisco routers and switches, scaling as much as 800G per port to assist meet the calls for of AI infrastructure.

We’re additionally serving to prospects with their budgetary and sustainability objectives via {hardware} and software program innovation. For instance, system scalability and Cisco Silicon One energy effectivity assist scale back the quantity of sources required for AI/ML interconnects. Clients can entry community visibility into precise utilization of energy and carbon footprint resembling KWh, value, and CO2 emissions through Cisco Nexus Dashboard Insights.

With this AI/ML infrastructure options portfolio, Cisco helps prospects ship high-quality experiences for his or her end-users with quick insights, via sustainable, high-performance AI/ML Ethernet materials which might be clever and operationally environment friendly.

Is my information heart able to help AI/ML purposes?

Information heart architectures must be designed correctly to help AI/ML workloads. To assist prospects accomplish this aim, we utilized our intensive information heart networking expertise to create a information heart networking blueprint for AI/ML purposes (see Determine 2), which discusses easy methods to:

• Construct automated, scalable, low-latency, Ethernet networks with help for lossless transport, utilizing congestion administration mechanisms resembling express congestion notification (ECN) and precedence move management (PFC) to help RoCEv2 transport for GPU memory-to-memory switch of data.
• Design a non-blocking community to additional enhance efficiency and allow quicker completion charges of AI/ML jobs.
• Shortly automate configuration of the AI/ML community cloth, together with congestion administration parameters for quality-of-service (QoS) management.
• Obtain completely different ranges of visibility into the community via telemetry to assist shortly troubleshoot points and enhance transport efficiency, resembling real-time congestion statistics that may assist determine methods to tune the community.
• Leverage the Cisco Validated Design for Information Heart Community Blueprint for AI/ML, which incorporates configuration examples as greatest practices on constructing AI/ML infrastructure.

Determine 2. Cisco AI information heart networking blueprint

How do I get began?

Evolving to a next-gen information heart will not be easy for all prospects, which is why Cisco is collaborating with NVIDIA® to ship AI infrastructure options for the info heart which might be straightforward to deploy and handle by enterprises, public sector organizations, and repair suppliers (see Determine 3).

Determine 3. Cisco/NVIDIA partnership

By combining industry-leading applied sciences from Cisco and NVIDIA, built-in options embrace:

• Cisco information heart Ethernet infrastructure: Cisco Nexus 9000 Collection switches and Cisco 8000 Collection Routers, together with Cisco Optics and Cisco Silicon One, for high-performance AI/ML information heart community materials that management latency and loss to allow higher experiences with well timed outcomes for AI/ML workloads
• Cisco Compute: M7 technology of UCS rack and blade servers allow optimum compute efficiency throughout a broad array of AI and data-intensive workloads within the information heart and on the edge
• Infrastructure administration and operations: Cisco Networking Cloud with Cisco Nexus Dashboard and Cisco Intersight, digital expertise monitoring with Cisco ThousandEyes, and cross-domain telemetry analytics with the Cisco Observability Platform
• NVIDIA Tensor Core GPUs: Newest-generation processors optimized for AI/ML workloads, utilized in UCS rack and blade servers
• NVIDIA BlueField-3 SuperNICs: Function-built community accelerators for contemporary AI workloads, offering high-performance community connectivity between GPU servers
• NVIDIA BlueField-3 information processing models (DPUs): Cloud infrastructure processors for offloading, accelerating, and isolating software-defined networking, storage, safety, and administration features, considerably enhancing information heart efficiency, effectivity, and safety
• NVIDIA AI Enterprise: Software program frameworks, pretrained fashions, and improvement instruments, in addition to new NVIDIA NIM microservices, for safer, steady, and supported manufacturing AI
• Cisco Validated Designs: Validated reference architectures designed assist to simplify deployment and administration of AI clusters at any scale in a variety of use circumstances spanning virtualized and containerized environments, with each converged and hyperconverged choices
• Companions: Cisco’s world ecosystem of companions will help advise, help, and information prospects in evolving their information facilities to help AI/ML purposes

Main the best way

Cisco’s collaboration with NVIDIA goes past promoting present options via Cisco sellers/companions, as extra technological integrations are deliberate. By these improvements and dealing with NVIDIA, we’re serving to enterprise, public sector, service supplier and web-scale prospects on the info heart journeys to completely enabled AI/ML infrastructures, together with for coaching and inference fashions.

We’ll be at NVIDIA GTC, a world AI convention operating March 18–21, so go to us at Sales space #1535 to study extra.

Within the subsequent weblog of this collection, Jeremy Foster, SVP/GM, Cisco Compute, will focus on the Cisco Compute technique and improvements for mainstreaming AI.

Share: